Nikolaou Kostas

Yitzhak Cohen had been a friend of Nikolaou Kostas
since the age of 14. On Yom
Kippur of 1943, the Germans began to concentrate the Jews in Athens in preparation for deportation to the concentration
camps. Nikolaou came to his Jewish friend’s house to ask how
he could help him and his family (seven people). He suggested that he
hide his friend and his friend’s family in the country, and finally
obtained forged non-Jewish identity papers for them.

Kostas arranged
for a boat to take the Cohen family from Greece to Turkey. Until a boat could
be found, he hid the family in the mountains. Five or six other Jews
also joined the on the journey to Turkey. The Cohen family set sail
for Izmir. From there, they made their way to Aleppo and then to Palestine.
One sister, along with the family’s elderly father, were hidden
in Greece with non-Jewish identity documents which Dr. Kostas had obtained.